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Senate pounds Brennan on CIA ‘trust deficit’

Thursday’s Senate hearing to confirm President Barack Obama’s choice to lead the CIA bared some of the deepest wounds of the more than decadelong war on terrorism and illustrated — at times dramatically — how keenly America continues to feel them.

John Brennan faced rigorous questioning from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle over the most contentious issues in American national security, including harsh interrogation techniques and the secret assassinations of terrorists, and he endured the jeers of protesters who became so rancorous they shut down his hearing.

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PHOTOS: Protesters at Brennan hearing

Feinstein halts hearing for protesters

Lawmakers also pounced on the role Brennan may have played in the release of secrets to the press; the “trust deficit” between the CIA and Congress; and the cloak of secrecy the Obama administration and its predecessor have thrown over their policies on detainees, drones and other matters.

But Brennan vowed that if he’s confirmed, he would keep mindful of the Constitution, the law, the role of Congress and the public interest as he carries out the secret business of a spy agency that sometimes shares the shadows uneasily with its alphabet-soup siblings in the intelligence community and its behemoth cousin, the Department of Defense.

Nonetheless, in a manner perhaps befitting America’s spymaster, Brennan refused to be pinned down on several key questions. When lawmakers pressed him to commit to giving them documents they said were long due from the CIA, he vowed to take their cause to Langley but not necessarily to give them exactly what they wanted. When they pressed him on America’s secret drone strike program, he agreed it should be more transparent and the public should have a more complete understanding, but he did not give many details in Thursday’s open session.

And in one key moment, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) asked Brennan repeatedly about waterboarding — which the CIA used along with other harsh interrogation techniques in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks. Levin asked Brennan whether he considers that technique torture.

Waterboarding was “something that should have been banned long ago,” he said. But was it torture? “I have personal opinion that waterboarding is reprehensible and it’s something that should not be done,” Brennan said. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who previously headed the CIA, has said he believes waterboarding to be torture.

Given Brennan’s views, why didn’t he act to stop what the CIA called “enhanced interrogation techniques” at the time he knew about them?

“I expressed my personal objections to the [enhanced interrogation techniques], waterboarding, nudity and others,” Brennan said, adding that they were “something being done elsewhere in the agency under the authority of others.”

Brennan’s exchanges with senators took place in a hearing chamber with an abundance of empty chairs, left there after repeated protests by the liberal group Code Pink prompted Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein to order Capitol Police to clear the room.